The Grocery Gap

Urban revitalization does not at first glance relate to the
growing national interest in fresh fruits and vegetables. But the
Pennsylvania-based Food Trust views the supermarket as the
perfect starting point for improving the commercial viability of a
neighborhood. When the group launched back in 1992, it was originally dedicated
to expanding farmers' markets throughout Philadelphia. Today, the group is
working tirelessly to eliminate food deserts--areas
without any access to "real" food.

To accomplish this goal, the Food Trust is working with
Pennsylvania lawmakers to develop a series of public/private partnerships that
address food access problems. One such program is the Fresh Food Financing Initiative, a
grant and loan program that encourages supermarkets to open in underserved
areas. The group is also working on nutrition policy for Philadelphia schools
and is helping corner stores improve their produce offerings. Yael Lehmann, The Food
Trust's executive director, spoke with
The Atlantic about what supermarkets can accomplish for cities
nationwide.

How did The
Food Trust start?

Duane Perry, the founder of The Food Trust, used to manage the
Reading Terminal market in Philadelphia. It's a really cool market, with every
kind of food you could possibly want. Right around 1992, he had a light bulb go
off: "Reading Terminal Market is such a great asset to Philadelphia, but I
really wish there could be Reading Terminals all across the city." He'd
heard from people at the market that they'd taken two buses to get there--he
knew that in most of the neighborhoods outside Center City, people had to
travel vast distances to find fresh produce.

So he founded The Food Trust, and first thing we did was open
farmers' markets in low-income areas that had no access to fresh and affordable
food. We still run about 30 farmers markets, and we accept food stamps at all
of those markets.

Nearly 20
years after The Food Trust was founded, how has our understanding of food availability
changed?

It's certainly new for people to be aware of what we now call a
"food desert." When I first began working with Duane Perry, we had to
spend a lot of time showing people maps, showing them the evidence. Of course,
when we spoke to the folks who actually lived in those neighborhoods, they were
acutely aware that there was no fresh food available.

Beginning around 2002, we put a lot of effort into showing people
how serious the problem was in Philadelphia, and showing that it had serious
health consequences. The areas where there was no access to fresh food also had
the highest rates of diet-related deaths. After we launched our first report, showing a
connection between health and food access, people started to pay attention
here. City council members and state representatives were surprised. They
hadn't seen anything like that. So we started to feel some movement and some
mobilization.

Has
increased national awareness of nutrition, discussed most prominently by
Michelle Obama, factored into your work?

We're thrilled that the First Lady has embraced this approach as
part of her campaign to end childhood obesity. As part of her Let's
Move program, she includes something called the Healthy Food Financing Initiative, which has the goal of eliminating food deserts in seven years.
This national initiative will invest $400 million the first year, and it will
be based on our Fresh Food Financing Initiative here in Pennsylvania. We
started our program in 2004, and six years later, there have been 83 projects.
The results are so exciting: half a million people who didn't have access to
fresh food now do. We brought grocery stores into neighborhoods that hadn't had
them for 20 years. When the First Lady and other folks at the White House saw
that this could really work, they got excited. They can see that the investment
really pays.

Is there
something unique about Philadelphia's food access problems that make The Food
Trust especially significant there?

There truly was a crisis in that so many people lacked access to
fresh food. For change to occur, there has to be that urgency, that feeling of
"We can't wait on this anymore. We have to do something." Along with that, we have a few
different visionaries here, like Representative Dwight Evans. Another thing
that's great about this area--and this is crucial--is that we were able to engage
the grocery operators themselves. That wouldn't necessarily be the case
everywhere. So all of these things converged with a remarkable result.

Lately
you've been working on improving healthy offerings in the iconic corner store.
How are you going about this?

We truly feel that this has to be a comprehensive approach. It's
really about trying to make it as easy as possible for people to eat healthy.
You try and hit it from multiple angles. So we work in schools, improving the
food choices; our school programs have been shown to reduce childhood obesity
by 50%. But one of the things the teachers told us was that kids just went and
shopped at the corner store after school. They could buy a ton of calories for
not a lot of money. The baseline results from one of the research studies that
we're doing right now shows that kids get more than 600 calories every time
they go to the corner store.

There's a lot of interest across the country on what we can do
with corner stores, especially those located near schools. We just received
stimulus funding to work in 1000 stores in Philadelphia. Before that, we were
working with just 40. The level of intervention ranges from transforming a
place top to bottom to just making sure it has at least one unit of
refrigeration that can hold fresh fruit salads.

Is providing
access enough? For people who haven't ever learned how to cook, do you also
need to provide outreach?

We've also started doing supermarket tours. It can be pretty
complex for anybody, including me, to make sense of food labels, especially
since there's a lot of misleading marketing. We have started doing nutrition
education at supermarkets. For foodservice folks, there has been a need to do
some education. We recently arranged a knife skills class.

But I don't want to perpetuate the stereotype that somehow I can
teach other people how to eat. This is really an equity issue. I think we all
deserve some of the basic things in life. I think we all deserve to be able to
get food from the grocery store in our neighborhood.

Do you
confront criticism that you're not doing enough when it comes to sustainable,
organic foods?

We are increasingly trying to see how we can incorporate local
food into grocery stores and corner stores. I think there's a lot of potential
there. But not everyone can grow eggplant in the backyard. If you're going to
try to solve the problem of food deserts across the country, there has to be a
large solution to a large problem.

Have you
seen neighborhoods change as a result of introducing supermarkets?

There are numerous examples. Progress Plaza is the nation's oldest
African American -owned and -developed shopping center. Until recently, the
Plaza had a Radio Shack and a dollar store and that's about it. The area hadn't
had a supermarket in over 10 years. But then this new Fresh Grocer came up. And if you saw the plaza now, you wouldn't recognize it.
Supermarkets really do serve as anchors. Now there are all these gorgeous
stores on the plaza, and it looks amazing.

We're about to launch a city program in New Orleans. There was
already a food access problem there before Katrina, but afterward, the city
lost about half of its grocery stores. And when talking to city council, the
only thing that has worked to bring residents back to a neighborhood is bringing
in a supermarket. It makes people happy to live in the neighborhood, and it
also brings confidence. It brings shoppers and therefore other businesses, and
pretty soon you get into this really great cycle where everybody's winning.
More people are shopping, more businesses are opening, and nobody has to take
buses anymore to get a bag of groceries.

The rise of megaregions, the decline of home ownership, the shift away from a car culture - these are among the nation's responses to today's economic turmoil.
Adapted from Richard Florida's new book, The Great Reset. More »